The season so far for fans of Fulham, has been one major roller coaster ride, with Fulham lurching from one tepid performance to one where we play the opposition off the park, usually within the same 90 minutes and as such it can very frustrating.
Is there something wrong by the banks of the Thames, Mark Hughes obviously felt so and so he jumped ship before the season started, pointing at a lack of ambition at the club, an argument that now looks weaker since he has pitched up down the road with QPR, who to be fair are a smaller club than Fulham and whose first priority must have been the same as Fulham's and that of about 13 or 14 other Premier League clubs, which is to stay in the Premier League. I'm sure at some stage we will get the full story why he left,although it must be said there are many interesting rumours.
This meant that Fulham finally got the man they wanted before Hughes took over, the like able Dutchman, Martin Jol. It must be said, that I can safely say he was not my first choice, as living in North London and alot of my mates been Tottenham fans, they warned me what to expect and to be fair, many of them seem to be correct. He may be liked down the lane for getting them to finish so close to the top 4 whilst he was in charge there, it does not mean that he didn't leave the Spurs fans baffled by his selections, tactics and substitutions, something that Fulham fans have become used to over the season so far.
The struggle at Fulham this season, seems to be what formation we are supposed to be playing and where the players that are selected to play fit into that formation. As a Dutchman, I think it is fair to say that Jol prefers to play their favoured formation of 4-4-3, however more often than not this season it has looked more like a 4-5-1 or 4-2-3-1 formation, either way I do not think we currently have the players available all of the time to play in either of these formations where we would be successful in the long term.
A few Fulham fans point out that our two biggest wins this season have come when we played 4-4-2, against our local neighbours QPR and in the second half against Newcastle, where n total we won 6-0 and 5-2 respectively. However you could also argue that we were helped in the fact that QPR played appallingly against us whilst Newcastle's second half performance was as woeful as ours was in the first half.
However, there is no arguing that our best performances have come when we have played with more pace in our play and a bit more direct, where we actually have a go at teams rather than sit back and wait for things to happen. The second half performances against Tottenham, Liverpool and Arsenal are testament to this, as we played all three sides off the pitch, if sometimes without reward and I'm sure that with better refereeing decisions we could be a few more points better off.
The trouble with the side at the moment is consistency and getting us to string a couple of decent performance together. The reason we haven't for me comes down to the tactics and team selections made by our manager and what he expects from his players. After the one dimensional but ultimately safe play under Hodgson, which got a bit better under Hughes attacking wise, Jol is trying to introduce a bit more fluidity and freedom into our play, but I think it is clear to see that some of the players are not buying into it or failing to understand it and watching from afar, it is very hard sometimes to work out where players are supposed to be playing and how it is supposed to work, and at times our defence have been left cruelly exposed because of this.
There are a few obvious things that can be looked at from recent games however. The first is that Bryan Ruiz, as much as he looks like he could potentially be a world beater, is no centre midfielder. The second is blindingly obvious to anyone with a football brain, except our manager, Andy Johnson cannot play up top by himself, he needs someone alongside him. The next one is that we miss the work rate of Moussa , even if he can show flashes of brilliance one minute and be totally frustrating the next, his work rate for the side is second to none. The one obvious thing to me would be that we cannot afford to play Dembele, Ruiz, Murphy and Dempsey in the same side and expect it to work, (although it may have done against Wigan where we have our token away win for the season!) as it leaves the defence totally exposed.
Unless Jol brings in a few new faces in what is left of the transfer window, then I fail to see how we can continue to play the 4-3-3 cum 4-2-3-1 that he wants to play without us lurching from poor performance to good performance as we have been doing. Having said that, with the home games we have left, we should pick up enough points to stay up, just don't expect it to be an easy ride.
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